Why just buy buttons when you can buy “buttons of the moment”?
A few days ago I went to Buttonmania’s annual vintage button sale during my lunch break and spent an hour sorting through thousands of buttons with my colleagues Grace, Jill and Nicole.
Not only were there buttons on their original cards – like the 1940’s duck egg blue beauties above – but there were tubs of buttons priced at $50 per kilo. (You don’t actually have to buy a whole kilo of buttons though, they weigh and price smaller amounts).
There were also small lots of very special buttons – faceted glass, vegetable ivory and celluloid – and these were priced by size.
After I got all excited about the $50 per kilo goodies grouped by colour on the table, I was told that the same price applied to all the buttons in the store room too. I may have squealed a bit as I walked into the store room. Grace, Jill and Nicole disowned me at this point.
So, what did I buy?
I bought 100g of lolly coloured buttons from the bulk lots and the blue buttons on the card were $20 for the set. I was wearing yellow, green, butterscotch and coral bakelite bangles that day and I didn’t even notice that my colour choices matched my bangles until Grace pointed it out to me.
Now all I have to do is get over the feeling that the blue ones are too special to use or they’ll stay on the card for another 80 years.
Hi! I would hate to think that you would remove the vintage blue buttons from their card, I love vintage buttons on cards and have a largish collection of them. I also have some of the children’s Beutron button cards, some of these were purchased from Ken Arnold who lives in Bendigo when he had a stall at The Victorian Button Collectors Club Show a few years back. They are pictured in his “Needlework and Associated Collectables” book on page 36.
I have only just found your blog and I am enjoying it so much, cheers, Marian (fellow Aussie from Victoria)